Before My Eyes

The Barn P2

I wake up wrapped under a wooly blanket, Ollie lying to my side. Everyone downstairs seems pretty out of it from my view over the balcony.

I grab my hoodie and take a packet of cigarettes I find on the floor to the field outside.

The sky's still black, dotted with white stars. The only light out here is from the moon, but I can clearly see a boy's muscular back from the entrance of the barn and recognise it as Raff's immediately.

He's sitting with his knees tucked to his chest, playing with strands of grass and looking up at the sky. I walk over to him and do the same.

"Can't sleep." He takes one of the cigarettes and a lighter from his pocket.
"Neither," I reply and lie down onto the dewy grass.

"You know, Maisie was a bit pissed off with us going out in Summer," he says, lying down parallel to my side. I frown slightly. "What?"

"Yeah, I dunno." Circles of smoke pillow out of his lips as his face scrunches up with concentration. "She didn't like that we didn't tell her."

I lie flat on my back and try to look anywhere but him. "Well did you tell her it wasn't serious?"
"What?"
"Well why does she care? It was barely anything."

He sits up immediately and turns around to look back at me. "Are you joking, Mali? Barely anything?" I feel a lump growing in the bottom of my throat.

"Yeah, Raff.. it wasn't serious. You know that." I try desperately to bite back the guilt I'm feeling and manage to, but barely.

"How can you say that? How can you still lie to yourself?" He looks through me, his eyes blurring slightly, like he's remembering something. "I loved you. We were in love."

A sudden flood of pain and guilt fills the inside of my body. I can't hold it back anymore. A lone tear spills down my right cheek.

It's dark so he doesn't see, and he's stopped looking at me anyway. He's turned back around, staring out over the dark grey hills and steadily inhaling on the cigarette.

He stays for a while, waiting for me to say something, but I don't. I stay silent because I know everything he's said is true.

He suddenly gets up and starts walking to the barn. I try to not look back at him, but I can't stop myself when he starts speaking again, his voice cracking. "Fuck you, Mali, making me look like a fool. I fucking wish it was nothing."

He turns back to the barn and I barely make out him mutter, "Fuck you," again, more painfully this time.

***

Water trickles down my forehead and I quickly open my eyes to see Liam laughing and stood holding a bottle of water above me. "Eyyy, she's awake."

Levi runs over and jumps onto me. "Morning, Mals. How was your little country sleep?"

I push him off, laughing. "You stink, Leev, what have you been smoking?"
"This weird herb Spike had in his stack of hay." His eyes widen slightly and he nods back towards Spike. "Bit dodgy actually. Won't be doing that again."

"Grimmmm." I laugh with him, but I quickly remember Raff last night and my smile fades. "Is Raff about?"

Liam hops back over. "Nah he left with Maisie at 8 this morning. Had some essay to do at school or something."

"Oh okay cool." I gulp down the lump growing in my throat and join the others inside. They're all still lying down.

Spike has started picking things out of the fridge and then hovering around people's conversations, holding the food next to them.

I walk over to where Ollie is standing on his phone. He looks up at me. "Wow you look like shit." I can't tell if he's joking or not, but I know I do anyway.

"Cheers, thanks!" I say sarcastically. He raises one eyebrow at me and replies, "Alright calm down." He kind of smiles, but again, I can't tell if he's joking. Then he walks away from me to over where Rizo's standing.

I frown to myself and go back to see Liam and Levi. Lily's crouched by Spike, laughing, and I think they must've kissed last night because Lily is always clingy after a boy shows interest in her.

"Can we go now?" I ask them because I don't really want to have to be around Lily making me cringe.

"Yeah I'm done with this fucking weird barn." We all pick up our stuff, say thanks to Spike and start walking back.

"Wait, what about Lily," Liam whispers to me. "We can't just leave her, can we?"

"Lils, we're going now, come on," Rizo shouts back into the barn impatiently.
"Oh um.. I think I'm going to stay here with Spike for a bit. I'll catch the next train back to school."

We all nod and wave at the two of them and follow the road back to the train station. Suddenly I hear someone come up behind me and whisper something quietly in my ear.

"Come to my dorm at 11 tonight" Ollie walks from my side to in front of me and catches up with Liam, not looking behind him.